Bring on the Emmy’s — this season is going to rock!

This is the best season premiere I’ve seen in ages. It was smart, it was fast, it was fun — everyone was bitchier than ever before.

Last season ended with a lot of drama — Betty’s father’s Visa was denied and he was stuck in Mexico; Daniel and Alexa were in a car crash (because Alexa had hired a hit man to kill her dad — he cut the brakes just before she borrowed her father’s town car to rush her doped up brother to the hospital); Charlie announced she was pregnant, and Betty’s longed-for-beau Henry went back to Tucson with her because he wanted to raise his kid, since his own father hadn’t been around; Bradford Mead proposed to the evil, scheming Wilhelmina; Claire Meade broke out of prison; Amanda learned that Faye Summers was her real mother (which totally skeeved me out because that lead me to think that Bradford was likely her father, and Daniel used to be her boyfriend… and as she said in the show, Flowers in the Attic sex is the kind of dirty that doesn’t wash clean. And, very sadly, at the very end of the episode — Hilda’s fiance, Santos got shot. We ended the season with her sobbing.

Whew. Can’t believe I remembered all that.

So here’s what happened: The Suarez household is falling apart without their Dad. They don’t have cereal, they don’t have milk, no one has done the laundry — and Hilda won’t come out of her room. That made sense to me; her true love had just died. But, upstairs she was in bed with him and he was bandaged up and they were re-planning their wedding. She tried on her dress (that really did not look like the dress that Betty found at their grandmother’s house in Mexico) and he read her their vows. They talked, they laughed, they never left the bed. She looked really happy. And I was happy. At first I thought it was a dream sequence. My sister-in-law walked in during the last few minutes of the episode. I explained to her who the characters were.

“She’s dreaming,” my sister-in-law said.

“No way,” I told her. “He’s been alive this whole episode.”

But, then, at the very end Betty knocked on the door — and Hilda was holding a pillow. “He’s gone,” she said. (I can’t tell you how angry I am — that I had to watch this guy die twice.)

But, I digress. . . Betty has been frantically running around trying to meet with her dad’s lawyer, trying to bring sandwiches to Daniel in so he doesn’t have to eat nasty hospital food and trying to forget that the love of her life has left. She has a meltdown at a photo shoot — Wilhelmina is finally in charge of the magazine and she’s having a “Ladies of Tragedy” spread where they take women who have been through hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, etc. and then give them a makeover (which only makes me cringe because, as a reporter, I think it’s actually a believable story my editors would assign) .

Betty flips out about how the magazine only cares about what is on the outside — these women’s lives are ruined, and there isn’t enough hair gel in the studio to fix that. (I think it might have been nicer of her to instead think like Oprah and see if the magazine could donate some new things to these women — other than an outfit.)

In her haste, Betty, runs into a magazine mock-up that reads “Love Hurts,” and requires a trip to the doctor and an eye-patch. The doctor says he’s concerned about her high blood pressure, etc. Is she going to have a heart attack at the end of the episode? Everything in this show is always building.

Meanwhile, Amanda — who was binging pretty hard at the end of last episode — is now bigger than a (slimmed-down?) Betty. She’s ballooned and eating candy non-stop. She and Mark go to Scarsdale where they confront her parents (who were having a mid-afternoon orgy) and they confess that yes, Faye Summers was her mother. But they don’t know who the father is. Uhm, maybe her long-time lover, Bradford Meade? Signs point to yes. (She spends the rest of the episode trying to get a DNA sample for a paternity test. Mark finally gets some ear hairs for her. Yuck.) The two of them were exceptionally catty and bitchy and mean and I loved them.

Claire Meade and her friend, “Yoga,” are hiding out in the Hamptons. Claire offers Wilhelmina Mode in exchange for her husband. They agree to meet under a bridge. They each send a proxy. (I love Yoga on the outside — she’s really enjoying her life in luxury.) Claire goes to Bradford’s office, finds Willie — and punches her out. The wicked witch doesn’t usually go down so easily.

At the hospital, Alexis is in a coma. Every day, Daniel (in a wheelchair) sits outside her room in the ICU. But he doesn’t go inside. The accident is his fault. He blames himself.

He meets Betty the evening of her meltdown, and they go to the park, and have a funeral. The bury the soy sauce packets from her first lunch with Henry, and the paper clips he gave her, and basically anything he ever touched that Betty has hoarded. Daniel throws into the grave his pain meds. Then, he visits his sister and says it’s his fault and he’s sorry. And boom, in perfect TV-timing, she wakes up.

Betty’s Broadway and fashion-loving nephew, breaks out of arts and crafts camp and sneaks into Mode. Willie spots him as a gifted fashion elf. I really do hope he gets to work at Mode. It’s his calling. It’s only right. I’d love to see the little guy on staff. He would be hope and inspiration to gay kids everywhere.

And maybe that would help me get over watching Santos died again.

But, on an upward note, it looks like Henry’s coming back. We missed him.